comuter powers up for 1 sec then restarts over and over again

And see if it works now.

You are describing a Power Supply with failing Capacitors.

Col

Try booting from your Windows install disk or other bootable CD or DVD. Will it run OK?

Check the caps next to the processor on the mb if they are popped out they are bad one or two may cause intermittent restart. Or you have a virus. good luck eh.

These beeps usually mean that something has gone wrong inside the computer. Make sure the video card is in proplerly in the computer if there isnt a onboard one. Also, make sure that all hard drives, fans, the processor and motherboard are all connected and work when you power on. if all these are ok then you have a much more serious problem! Hope this helps!

I had a similar-sounding problem (computer would start to power up, then turn off after a couple of seconds) and it turned out to be bad RAM. See if you can get hold of some known good RAM and try putting that in.

I think you had a problem with your ram.. try to change all ram with a good one.. dont put the old ram with the good ram and try it again... if it still beeps 3 times then you probably got problem with your ram slot ^_^ 3 beeps from the motherboard means your ram Fail*

Not all RAM works with all motherboards. You didn't mention if you were doing a RAM upgrade. If these RAM sticks were working previously, at least one may be bad. If you have new RAM, double-check the RAM and motherboard specifications to ensure it's the correct type and speed of RAM.

Hello I had the same issue recently, and I reinstalled the OS, because there was a driver error in my installation, if you can get to the boot screen, try using an OS disk to boot up, and see if the issue is resolve

cpu overheats and closes system down and reboots when temperature drops
thermal paste on cpu - heatsink no good, clean both surfaces and apply more thermal paste

overheating cpu closes the system down then restarts when the temperature drops,
the thermal paste no longer doing its job between cpu and heatsink. Clean surfaces and apply new thermal paste. Have done this on numerous laptops

I had this issue and every time, need to change RAM...try replacing your RAM..

I had my computer go into an endless reboot cycle after the last Patch Tuesday. Wound up reinstalling the entire OS and software. Royal pain, but I learned a lot and did some hardware upgrades. Runs great now!

I had something similar, which may or may not be the same for you - you already have a plethora of options to chose from it seems!

My issue started out with intermittent blue screens (after a recent windows XP patch) - these became more frequent until suddenly it started doing the start-up reboot special.

Safe booting and switching off almost all services helped a few times, but then even safe boot failed to work.

After lots of chasing and questions, I identified the my hard drive had been corrupted (I tried to slave the hard drive into another PC of the same spec, but couldn't access the drive at all).

Ended up buying a new PC - trying to image the disk now for recovery - needless to say I have invested in an on-line back-up tool now - also switched off the windows auto-update until I know the patches are safe! :0)

I would suggest:
1. Confirm PSU power rating is sufficient for any hardware or component upgrades you have made
2. Test clean RAM (and test your RAM on another PC if possible)
3. Check for Paste issues (should be visible under a good light and poking around
4. Test hard drive by slave or safeboot and detailed disk-checking
5. Look at a profession repair or purchase (unless still in warranty).

HTH - good luck

Good job troubleshooting using divide and conquer to find the defective area. The 3 beeps for Intel BIOS is for a memory error which you can expect with no RAM installed. Did you have another memory stick to troubleshoot further? Make sure you have the right memory chip. That board supports DDR2 800/667 MHz DIMMs.